West Indies have suffered more fallout over their dispiriting first Test loss to Australia with the ICC fining the team Sunday for maintaining a slow over-rate in Hobart.
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“Tough three days for us, we didn’t really start very well”, captain Jason Holder said.
“I thought if I bowl like I did in the first innings I probably won’t be getting too many more games, so (I had) better change something”.
Holder was 3 overs short of the target during the first test and every player was fined 10% of the match fees for every over the team was short, and Holder took the double amount being the captain. The challenge for us for selectors is to try out and work out what the best six is.
It was Pattinson, playing his first test in 18 months in place of the injured Mitchell Starc, who provided the spearhead after Smith had become the first Australia skipper in six years to enforce the follow-on on home soil.
The West Indies lost 14 wickets in a session and a half Saturday, not helped by Gabriel’s inability to bat.
Hazlewood had match figures of 7-78 to push his 2015 Test tally to 51 while Pattinson took a devastating 5-27 in the Windies’ second innings that ended before tea on the third day.
“It felt like I was trying extremely hard to do that, whereas the second innings (yesterday) when I came out I was running straight lines and had my wrist behind the ball, it felt pretty easy”.
Replacement batsman Shaun Marsh had been expected to make way for the returning Khawaja in the middle order but seemingly ensured his spot after scoring 182 in a 449-run stand with man-of-the-match Adam Voges (269no) in Hobart – a new Test record for the fourth wicket.
Hazlewood (4-45) took the lead as the hosts wrapped up West Indies’ innings with only 16 runs added to their overnight tally of 207-6 on a chilly morning in Tasmania.
Yet they couldn’t possibly foresee just how limp the West Indies would be at the start of a contest offering them the chance to at least restore a little of their tarnished reputation. “I don’t want to do any further damage”, Smith said.
Smith will sit out his Big Bash League side Sydney Sixers’ domestic fixtures against Sydney Thunder and Hobart Hurricanes after aggravating an injury in his right knee and straining his right hip. “But he’s 26. He gets a decent break now”, he said.
“I’ve always held the view that promoting Test cricket is not just about the contest itself, it’s also about an opportunity to see great players, great players creating history”, Sutherland said in Hobart.
“It’s just a situation where we need to perform our roles. We have to exercise patience a lot more when we bowl and we’ll be a lot more successful”.
Does Khawaja come back in?
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Usman Khawaja is set to make his return from a hamstring injury for the Boxing Day Test, creating a selection headache for Australia.
